Beautiful Lies: How Delusion Became the Solution

I've always had a vivid imagination and a pretty decent sense of humor.

I've also been told both can be coping mechanisms, which explains a lot.

I'm not suggesting a shitty childhood made me like Robin Williams. First off, it wasn't 100% shitty. Second, I'll never be that talented.

But that childhood taught me early how to pay attention, read the room, focus on what people said...and didn't say. You learn to notice things.

Certain footsteps in the hall outside my room or my name said in a certain way could tell me how my night was about to go.

My bedroom, ironically, was the safest place in the house. My mother had me keep peanut butter and saltines under my bed for when she wasn't home, so I wouldn't have to come out and risk running into her husband.

Her husband, the man responsible for half my DNA and pretty much everything you'll find under the search term: "Daddy Issues."

Oh, and "Pedophile".

Let's just say I got really good at pretending I was anywhere else but where I was.

I rehearsed escapes I'd never make, dreamed of apologies I never heard, and came up with (what I thought were) mic-drop comebacks nobody ever received.

I'd put myself into movie plots and create elaborate scenarios where I was the hero, the tragic heroine, the most beautiful princess, the kickass rockstar, the fearless adventurer, the wickedly funny comedian.

In my own head, I wasn't painfully shy or scared. Nobody was picking on me, and I sure as hell wasn't worried about what anyone thought of me.

The Heather that lived in my own head had balls.

The actual Heather barely spoke to anyone.

Whenever things went sideways in my life, I'd dream up scenes to make me feel better. None of it was true, obviously, but they were my beautiful little lies.

Imagination gave me escape, and humor made it endurable.

I was a little performer: pageant queen, dance-class girl, and band nerd. My teen years were spent rehearsing dance routines and pageant walks in our grimy garage and lip-syncing power ballads into my yellow-and-white Ambassador curling iron.

It was the '80s; we worked with whatever we had.

I was a movie nut, especially musicals, and wanted desperately to be Finola Hughes in Stayin' Alive. The beautiful accent, the figure, the impossibly straight hair...

I had none of those things going for me.

My accent sounds like a banjo in comparison; my figure is the bane of my existence, and my hair has spent most of my life rejecting my attempts at being stylish.

Finola still lives in my head.

At fourteen, I auditioned for and was accepted into our state's top performing arts high school. By senior year, I was attending the same school as a future Pussycat Doll.

Not that I knew her. I barely spoke to the people sitting next to me. My desire to perform in front of strangers did not supersede my social awkwardness.

But I loved being there. I wasn't in a dirty garage that smelled like gasoline and mold anymore. I was surrounded by genuinely talented people who were going places.

And I thought I might, too.

I had plans, big plans. Acting, dancing, definitely Broadway if I was letting Finola take the wheel.

By senior year, though, all that imagination didn't stop me from losing my nerve. While some of my classmates went on to LA, Juilliard, or abroad, I stayed right there in Louisville.

But there were plenty of practical reasons for my hesitation, or so I told myself. My Depression-era grandparents were the first to (repeatedly) warn me of the insanity of planning to make a living as a performer.

But it's not their fault. I just used that as an excuse to not face my fears.

Because I was afraid I'd fail. I was terrified I'd learn that I wasn't nearly as talented as I thought I was, and other people would see that, too.

So I let fear talk me out of the risk and called it being realistic.

I wish I could say that was the last time I confused fear with good judgment.

Instead, I got married at 22, right after getting an A.S. degree. I regret everything about that marriage except the daughter it gave me, but at the time, I thought I knew what I was doing.

I was an adult, after all, or so I kept telling everyone who tried to warn me about the difference between a manchild and a man.

I met a man who was losing his sight. He was intriguing and needed a lot of help adjusting to what was happening to him. I was empathetic and had gotten very good at anticipating what others needed from me.

Looking back, this was not the meet-cute I once thought it was.

His needs gave me a role I felt comfortable in: being needed. I could make his life easier, and there was certainly something gratifying about being that important to someone.

What I didn't understand, despite the warnings from people who loved me, was the difference between being loved and simply being needed.

For nearly a decade, we were a perfect match in all the wrong ways.

As his vision deteriorated into legal blindness, I was his girl Friday. I read things to him. I put touch dots on appliances so he could use them on his own. I encouraged him to learn Braille and use a cane, although he resisted.

The more he resisted, the more I adapted for him.

And it didn't stop with his blindness. I managed the house, our daughter, the dog, appointments, meds, his moods, and whatever fresh hell came our way.

Meanwhile, he criticized and insulted me, accused me of things I wasn't doing, and made sure I understood my best was never quite enough.

My dumb ass thought it was because even though we both worked full-time, we needed more money. So I decided to go back to college, still convinced I could fix it all.

Instead, he just got suspicious. "You're just going to school to find someone better and leave me," he accused.

Never mind that between working, classes, raising a child, and managing the house, I barely had time to breathe, let alone enjoy some torrid affair that lived in his head.

Le sigh. More red flags than a matador parade, and still I stayed.

More than once, he threatened suicide when he thought I might leave him.

And still, I stayed.

I asked him to come to couples counseling. He refused. "Going to therapy means admitting we have a problem," he reasoned.

facepalm

For years, I convinced myself it was his blindness that made it all harder, that marriage was this hard. If I could just be more patient, more understanding, maybe things would get better.

You ever wish you could go back in time and just...smack the stupid right out of yourself?

My childhood had left me pretty well-equipped to tolerate his abuse.

But eventually, I stopped imagining myself elsewhere, and I didn't find a damn thing funny anymore, either, because I was too burnt out to care.

Two back-to-back incidents finally made me see my life for what it was.

Only took about ten years.

On a random summer day, I was in traffic, a thousand things on my mind, and my phone buzzing with another "just checking in" call.

God forbid I have five whole minutes to myself.

And all of a sudden, it hit me: this is it.

This is my life.

Nothing was going to change. The arguments, the loneliness, and the nonstop grind would all be the same for me at fifty unless I did something about it.

A few weeks later, at a business lunch, someone asked, "So, tell me about yourself."

I sat there, stumped.

I couldn't think of anything interesting to say.

I had no identity that didn’t involve taking care of someone else. I wasn’t a happy wife. I didn’t even feel like a whole person.

I was a utility.

That's when I decided, come hell or high water, I was leaving. And this time, I meant it.

I knew I wasn't going to make it through another round of tears and guilt, so this time, I just detached. I deliberately stopped engaging and reacting to him.

It was easy to stop trying to make him understand me because I no longer gave a tinker's damn if he did.

He noticed immediately, of course, and accused me of not loving him anymore.

I mean, he wasn't wrong.

I hadn't loved him for a long time. At that point I only felt resentment for him, followed by guilt for being resentful of a blind man.

And I realized that combination was the only reason I'd hung in as long as I had. "I don't want to be in this marriage anymore," I finally told him, my voice flat.

I couldn't even pretend to be sad about it.

That's when he suggested therapy.

I refused; that ship had sailed and was somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle by then.

Of course, he immediately asked, "Is there someone else?" as if he couldn't fathom he might be the reason.

Despite everything, I still struggled with that decision. I'd taken my vows seriously and hung in far longer than I should have, trying to fix something that never should have been.

When nothing else worked this time, he made those same tired threats of killing himself - which only served to piss me right off.

I finally saw them for the disgusting, last-ditch power grab they were. So I called his bluff.

Was it my finest moment? Of course not.

But I'd spent nearly a decade ignoring red flags, taking his abuse, and feeling so much guilt for wanting to be free from the 'helpless' blind man.

So judge me if you will, but in that moment, I truly didn't give a damn what he did anymore.

Don't worry, he's still very much alive.

Probably still waiting on that Oscar.

Leaving him wasn't the magic pill I thought it would be, not at first.

At first, his family left me voicemails calling me selfish and asking what he was supposed to do now and who was going to care for him.

It took less than a week for them to feel the strain of what I'd managed for ten years, and yet it only reinforced the guilt I felt about our situation.

Even after the divorce, I still helped with some things and took his calls. Eventually I remember thinking, “Didn’t I pay a lot of money to not have to deal with this anymore?”

So I said no more. No more calls that weren't child-related. No more handling logistics. No more, no more, no more.

So much for a clean break.

But the more distance I put between myself and the past, the more I started imagining things again.

Not anything particularly glamorous, just...peace. Autonomy.

Things I wanted to try and places I wanted to go.

To learn who I could be beyond someone's caretaker, mother, wife, and emotional first responder.

It had been so long I didn’t even know what I liked anymore, but I tried new things, even things that felt ridiculous and I completely sucked at.

I didn't care; I felt so far behind that I was in this mad rush to catch up to some invisible waterline of progress.

And I began picturing what I wanted out of life before I even knew how I'd ever get it.

In other words, I started telling myself those beautiful lies again.

Obviously, I'm not imagining myself as a rock star anymore. I don't have the ass for the leather pants.

Instead, I imagine what I want for the 'pretty-much-mostly healed-perfectly-functioning-quite-normal(ish) adult' that I am.

Then I figure out how to make them happen.

Will all of it happen? Probably not - but I've been very wrong about possibilities before.

Some beautiful lies are worth believing in.

Heather Papovich is the voice behind Unfinished Business. She's seen some things. She'll tell you about them.